The next few days were spent in a twilight zone of waking and broken sleep. My daughter wanted to see James, so the day after we had gone to see him we arranged for us to take her to the funeral home. We prepared her as best we could but ultimately she desperately wanted to […]

We could at last see James again. Thirteen days after James killed himself we were finally able to see him. The funeral home contacted us to say the post mortem had been done and he was ready to be collected from the mortuary. I remember feeling an overwhelming need to see James right from the

A birthday spent choosing a grave. That’s how my nephew celebrated his birthday in 2025. Not going up town with his friends or a meal out with his girlfriend. We spent it walking through our local cemetery trying to decide where we would lay his father to rest. We met the funeral director and grave

Now this was an extremely difficult day. On the day James died his former home, that had been sold subject to contract, was due to complete, but in a cruel twist of fate it hadn’t gone through so it remained unsold. Over the past few weeks I’d been helping James pack up the house and

And so it continued. Phone calls, emails, text messages, sending, receiving, crying. From about day 5 after James killed himself it was pretty constant. Friends of James reaching out to offer their condolences’, institution’s wanting more information and detail before they would talk to me. The funeral arrangements had to be made. What did he

Over the past few days my sleeping situation was getting worse. I’d been getting up at between 3am and 4am, going downstairs and sitting and just staring. I think the magnitude of what had happened hadn’t really sunk in. Every waking minute I was thinking about James. What could I have done differently?? Was he

So many things to start organising. When someone dies you expect to be consumed with grief but what you may not understand is that there is a lot of admin to take care of alongside the grief, especially if you are the executor of the will. This admin is numerous and overwhelming:- Get death certificate

No sleep but so many tears. After gettting home safely my two nephews and I joined my Mum and dad and the rest of my family to talk about James and try to come to terms with what had happened. We all knew what had caused him to take his own life but that would

A 3:32am phone call is never a good one. I had been going to sleep recently with white noise playing and my phone on silent but my Nephew knew how to break through those defences in seconds. Phone rings, caller ID states Nephew calling, heart sinks. I knew it before he’d even uttered the unimaginable